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This document is also available at the following URL:
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html.
All software and documentation is available via both anonymous ftp and
the World Wide Web.]
THE ADAPTIVE COMMUNICATION ENVIRONMENT (ACE)
An Object-Oriented Network Programming Toolkit
----------------------------------------
Overview of ACE
The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) is an object-oriented
(OO) toolkit that implements fundamental design patterns for
communication software. ACE provides a rich set of reusable C++
wrappers and frameworks that perform common communication software
tasks across a range of OS platforms, including Win32 (i.e., WinNT
3.5.x/4.x, Win95, and WinCE), most versions of UNIX (e.g., SunOS 4.x
and 5.x, SGI IRIX 5.x and 6.x, HP-UX 9.x, 10.x, and 11.x, DEC UNIX
4.x, AIX 4.x, Linux, SCO, UnixWare, NetBSD, and FreeBSD), real-time
operating systems (e.g., VxWorks, Chorus, LynxOS, and pSoS), and MVS
OpenEdition. A single source tree is used for all these platforms and
porting ACE to other platforms is relatively easy.
The communication software components provided by ACE include event
demultiplexing and event handler dispatching, service initialization,
interprocess communication, shared memory management, message routing,
dynamic (re)configuration of distributed services, multi-threading,
and concurrency control. There are both C++ and Java versions of ACE
available.
ACE is targeted for developers of high-performance and real-time
communication services and applications on UNIX, POSIX, and Win32
platforms. ACE simplifies the development of OO network applications
and services that utilize interprocess communication, event
demultiplexing, explicit dynamic linking, and concurrency. ACE
automates system configuration and reconfiguration by dynamically
linking services into applications at run-time and executing these
services in one or more processes or threads.
ACE is currently used in commercial projects and products by dozens of
companies including Ericsson, Bellcore, Siemens, Motorola, Kodak,
Boeing, Lucent, DEC, Lockheed Martin, and SAIC. Commercial support
for ACE is available at http://www.riverace.com.
----------------------------------------
C++ Wrappers for OS Interfaces
The lower-level portions of ACE provide a set of portable and
type-secure C++ wrappers that encapsulate the following C language OS
interfaces:
. IPC mechanisms
-- e.g., Internet- and UNIX-domain sockets, TLI, Named
Pipes (for UNIX and Win32) and STREAM pipes;
. Event demultiplexing
-- e.g., select(), poll(), and Win32
WaitForMultipleObjects and I/O completion ports;
. Multi-threading and synchronization
-- e.g., Solaris threads, POSIX Pthreads, and Win32
threads;
. Explicit dynamic linking
-- e.g., dlopen/dlsym on UNIX and LoadLibrary/GetProc
on Win32;
. Memory-mapped files and shared memory management
-- e.g., BSD mmap(), SYSV shared memory, and Win32
shared memory;
. System V IPC
-- e.g., shared memory, semaphores, message queues.
The OS Adaptation Layer shields the upper levels of ACE from platform
dependencies associated with the underlying OS interfaces.
----------------------------------------
Frameworks and Class Categories
ACE also contains a higher-level network programming framework that
integrates and enhances the lower-level C++ wrappers. This framework
supports the dynamic configuration of concurrent distributed services
into applications. The framework portion of ACE contains the
following class categories:
. The Reactor
-- Supports both Reactive and Proactive I/O;
. The Service Configurator
-- Support dynamic (re)configuration of objects;
. The ADAPTIVE Service Executive
-- A user-level implementation of System V STREAMS,
that supports modular integration of
hierarchically-related communicaion services;
. Concurrency
-- Various types of higher-level concurrency
control and synchronization patterns (such as
Polymorphic Futures and Active Objects);
. Shared Malloc
-- Components for managing dynamically allocation
of shared and local memory;
----------------------------------------
Distributed Services and Components
Finally, ACE provides a standard library of distributed services that
are packaged as components. These service components play two roles
in ACE:
1. They provide reusable components for common distributed
system tasks such as logging, naming, locking, and time
synchronization.
2. They illustrate how to utilize ACE features such as the
Reactor, Service Configurator, Service Initialization,
Concurrency, and IPC components.
----------------------------------------
Middleware Applications
ACE has been used in research and development projects at many
universities and companies. For instance, it has been used to build
avionics systems at Boeing, telecommunication systems at Bellcore,
Ericsson, Motorola, and Lucent; medical imaging systems at Siemens and
Kodak; and many academic research projects. Two example middleware
applications provided with the ACE release include:
1. The ACE ORB (TAO) -- TAO is a real-time implementation of
CORBA built using the framework components and patterns
provided by ACE.
2. JAWS -- JAWS is a high-performance, adaptive Web server
built using the components in ACE.
----------------------------------------
OBTAINING ACE
The current ACE release is provided as a tar file that is around 3 Meg
compressed using GNU gzip. ACE may be obtained electronically from
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-obtain.html. This release
contains the source code, test drivers, and example applications
(including JAWS) for C++ wrapper libraries and the higher-level ACE
network programming framework developed as part of the ADAPTIVE
project at the University of California, Irvine and at Washington
University, St. Louis.
You can get The ACE ORB (TAO) in a companion release at
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html.
----------------------------------------
ACE DOCUMENTATION AND TUTORIALS
Many of the C++ wrappers and higher-level components have been
described in issues of the C++ Report, as well as in proceedings of
many journals, conferences, and workshops.
A collection of white papers and tutorial handouts are included at
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/languages/c++/ACE/ACE-documentation. This
directory contains postscript versions of various papers that describe
different aspects of ACE.
I update these papers periodically to reflect changes to the ACE
architecture. Therefore, you might want to check the date on the
files to make sure that you have read the most recent versions of
these papers.
This material is also available available via the WWW at URL:
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html
----------------------------------------
ACE MAILING LIST AND NEWSGROUP
A mailing list, ace-users@cs.wustl.edu, is available for discussing
bug fixes, enhancements, and porting issues regarding ACE. Please
send mail to me at the ace-users-request@cs.wustl.edu if you'd like to
join the mailing list. There is also a USENET newsgroup called
comp.soft-sys.ace. Please see
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-mail.html for details on how to
subscribe to the mailing list.
----------------------------------------
BUILDING AND INSTALLING ACE
Please refer to the http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-install.html
file for information on how to build and test the ACE wrappers. The
BIBLIOGRAPHY file contains information on where to obtain articles
that describe the ACE wrappers and the ADAPTIVE system in more detail.
The current release has been tested extensively, but if you find any
bugs, please report them to the ACE mailing list
ace-users@cs.wustl.edu using the $ACE_ROOT/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM.
Please use the same form to submit questions, comments, etc.
To ensure that you see responses, please do one of the following:
1) Subscribe to the ace-users mail list, by sending email with
contents "subscribe ace-users" to majordomo@cs.wustl.edu.
2) Or, monitor the comp.soft-sys.ace newsgroup for responses.
----------------------------------------
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Please see the file `$ACE_ROOT/THANKS' for a list of the thousands of
people who've contributed to ACE and TAO over the years.
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